King Faisal Mosque in Basel incites illegal activity

King Faisal Mosque in Basel incites illegal activity

By Kacem El Ghazzali. this Article was first published in the Basler Zeitung.

In King Faisal mosque in Basel, at a location accessible only to visitors who come for prayer, you can find an announcement on the wall in Arabic, which is a fatwa by a Salafist sheik from Saudi Arabia, explaining to Muslims who live in the West how they should deal with infidels during their stay in Western countries.

The fatwa starts by explaining the concept of “infidel land”, defined as a land where Islamic Sharia is not applied. This obviously includes Switzerland, as a country that uses civil law as a reference, on the basis of a social contract between all citizens and foreign residents, which guarantees everyone’s rights without any discrimination based on gender, skin color, or belief; meaning that whoever chooses to live in Switzerland would have to abide by those laws, which also ensure his or her protection from any discrimination or persecution.

But when a group of Muslims deems as essential to obey a religious order, even before the nature of the relationship towards society and law is defined, especially when such an order is related to murder or theft, then such an act (issuing such a fatwa and publicizing it) should be considered as dangerous, as it ignores all laws and institutions of the State, and threatens public peace.

This is the case for the fatwa that has been publicized at King Faisal mosque. It urges Muslims living in the land of the infidels, Switzerland, to keep the peace and avoid fighting the infidels and stealing their possessions, but it does not stop there: it adds the condition for peace, must be that those infidels should not have fought them in their religion. At first glance, the reader might wonder, then where’s the problem? Switzerland as we all know is a country that does not participate in wars and has no enmity whatsoever with Muslims, and the Swiss Constitution respects freedom of religion.

That is true of course. Switzerland is a democratic country, and has an old humanistic tradition. But through activities that I followed, by some Islamist Salafist organizations in Switzerland, such as the Swiss Islamic Council (IZRS), I found that in their public meetings, they always put forth an image of Switzerland as a country that is waging a war against Islam and Muslims. What else can we understand from claims made by Nicolas Blancho, the director of the (IZRS), on the Egyptian Salafist channel An-Nas TV, that Muslims are suffering from discrimination and persecution, that a Muslim can’t get a seat in the parliament, and that this “war” comes from the fact that the Western cultural model does not accept an alternative inspired by Islam? I would ask Blancho: what is this Islamic model that he wants as an alternative for Switzerland? Is it a model à la Saudi Arabia, with public decapitations of infidels, where women are not allowed into public libraries? And what would you say about a Muslim father who forbids his child daughter from having swimming courses, because he considers her small body subject to male sexual lust?

When a canton forbids the burka, because it kills the individuality of women and pushes them to isolation from social life, Islamists consider that war on Islam. King Faisal mosque fatwa is therefore a call to war, anarchy, and disrespect of Swiss law, because it linked respect of the law and peace with a condition prone to many interpretations, especially when used by such organizations that adopt a radical understanding of Islam. And instead of being an obvious matter, respect of the law becomes dependent upon religious approval, the future of peaceful coexistence in society tied to religious texts from Saudi Arabia, and the mosque supposed to be a place of worship becomes an institution that meddles with civil law. We have to ring the bells of danger, pay close attention to such happenings, and punish those who encourage such ideas.

Save Muslims from Swiss Islamic Council (IZRS)

Not all Muslims in Switzerland are extremists. It’s a truth that cannot be denied. It would be sheer ignorance to lump all Muslims in the same basket. And when I discuss Islam in Switzerland, I am speaking of that group of Muslims who are trying to impose their laws, and are also characterized by deviousness when dealing with counter arguments. Once for example when I met Swiss Islamic Council president Nicolas Blancho in Zurich, I asked him about their position concerning the application of Sharia, which is in contradiction with human rights, does not recognize civil law, and considers that all laws must be derived from Koran and Tradition. His answer was a shock. He did not say that he was against anyone who infringed upon the law even if it originated from religion, or that he would not accept that in the 21st century people would lose their lives for changing their religion. His answer was: I am with Sharia if people choose it. This shows the nature of his ideology, for he would never say something like “I’m against killing people who leave Islam”, but he would say “we respect Swiss law because we can’t apply Sharia yet”. When would Mr Blancho kill apostates then, do you think?

Every year, Blancho’s association, Swiss Islamic Council, organizes a conference where famous sheiks are invited. And since the beginning, the event has been criticized for inviting some of the most extremist religious personalities. Switzerland only managed to deny entry to two among them, namely Pierre Vogel and Mohamed Al-Arifi, for their incitement to hatred and violence.

Switzerland: Entry Ban for Peaceful Islamic Preacher (Pierre Vogel)

But the most important question here is: why does the council invite sheiks who call for violence, infringement on women’s rights, and killing apostates and infidels? This shows us the true face of the council, which is trying to create a parallel society that refuses to obey the law, and fights government policy to help immigrants integrate into society. The council is therefore hurting Muslims first and foremost, pushing them to isolate themselves from society and its laws, using religion and mosques as a tool of incitement against the society where they live, with its rich cultural components deemed as “blasphemous”.

I know that this article will not be met with a positive and responsible answer from Islamists. I have become used to getting responses in the form of terms and concepts that are completely unrelated to the context of the discussion; only attempts to silence whoever tries to criticize their enmity and hatred to diversity. For every time such topics are discussed in the Swiss public sphere, you get the usual ready-made response, which has almost become like a cliché, “you’re an islamophobe”; and so they succeed, time and again, into diverting the discussion from their deeds and calls for hatred and violence, to another topic completely detached from reality.

When I say that I’m against those who want to divide society into infidels and believers, good guys and bad guys, clean girls and dirty girls… when I state my disapproval of those who await a fatwa from Saudi Arabia to teach them how to deal with society and live among the Swiss people, when I oppose killing apostates, or infringements on human rights in the name of religion, it is simply stupid and foolish to call me an islamophobe, because I’m simply calling for a free society, that guarantees rights for everyone, as opposed to a society that wants to bring back practices from the Middle Ages, when grinding wars were waged under the slogan: killing an infidel is not a crime, it is the path towards God.

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